Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
What’s at Stake
Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.
A friend and I were collaborating on defining on who the stakeholders were for a project when he glibly replied, “Funny word, ‘stakeholder.’ Makes me think about dozens of people chasing me with wooden shafts clutched in their hands and they think I’m Dracula.”
It’s easy to feel the victim when your perception of a project stakeholder is linked to an image of crazed townspeople with pitchforks and torches coming after your hide. While they are often managerially empowered, stakeholders are not so much interested in hunting you down and harassing you as they are selfishly motivated to make sure your efforts are successful.
High Stakes
Simply put, stakeholders are entities with a vested interest--if you are doing things well on a project for them, then they are doing well. They may have even helped spawn the project by being one of its sponsors. To call them “selfish” is somewhat narrow-minded since all stakeholders are looking for ways to improve their organization, which in turn can make for a much better operation for them and who they represent.
What many people prefer not to acknowledge is that the success of an enterprise is directly related to how much it channels energy into stakeholder satisfaction. This effort requires reliable, dependable and repeatable effort by an organization to make …
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"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious and immature." - Tom Robbins |